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Summary of diving:
- The Federal Aviation Administration ended the air traffic curtailment on Monday, allowing air cargo and passenger operations to return to normal.
- The agency had ordered 40 major U.S. airports to reduce traffic by a combined 10 percent due to staffing constraints caused by the ongoing government shutdown. The FAA later reduced the reduction to 6% and then 3% after the government reopened.
- “Today’s decision to lift this order reflects the continued easing of employee concerns around the world. [National Airspace System] “And it will allow us to return to normal operations,” FAA Administrator Brian Bedford said in a press release Sunday announcing the end of the air traffic curtailment.
Diving Insights:
According to Derek Lessing, founder and senior e-commerce and transportation industry advisor at Cirrus Global Advisors, the FAA’s air traffic reductions have had minimal impact on air cargo flows and flight operations have returned to normal.
“In the end, the impacts were more severe on the traveling public than on the air cargo community,” Lessing said in an email. He noted that flight cancellations across regional carriers such as SkyWest Airlines and Envoy Air affect planes that are too small to carry significant volumes of air cargo.
“The major U.S. airlines have done a good job of protecting their hub-to-hub flights and their largest aircraft, which are often the backbone of their domestic cargo networks,” said Lessing, who previously served in logistics leadership roles at Amazon. He added that products and shippers were very active in evaluating alternative flights and working with airlines.
On the carrier side, UPS monitored its operations at affected airports and flexed its network to protect shipments, a spokeswoman said in an email. The airline was also partially protected as the mandated cuts affected flights between 6am and 10pm local time.
“A large number of our flights operate overnight, which was outside the FAA’s time limit,” the spokesperson said.
Despite the more severe impact on consumer flights, ClearJet, which uses airliner capacity to carry customers’ packages, saw “zero impacts” and did not need to use any mitigation steps, according to CEO and founder Chris Guggenheim.
“SuperCarrier ClearJet’s network has continued to operate normally and operations remain normal,” Guggenheim said in an email.
Although air cargo operations have largely avoided the major impacts of these cuts, the industry has continued to face significant challenges in recent weeks. Both UPS and FedEx grounded parts of their fleets after the Boeing MD-11 plane operated by UPS crashed in Louisville, Kentucky earlier this month, killing at least 14.
Meanwhile, weather-related cancellations have reduced some cargo flows at Delta’s Atlanta hub in the three days since the FAA first announced plans to reduce air traffic, Lossing reported.
“But that challenge will be constant any time winter weather hits an airport like Atlanta — not just the result of FAA guidance,” he said.
Editor’s note: This story was first published in our Logistics Weekly newsletter. Register here
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